Q&A with The Good Wife’s Julianna Margulies

NEW YORK: Emmy Award-winning actress Julianna Margulies, the star of The Good Wife, discusses the hit drama series with World Screen.

The Good Wife is widely considered one of the best shows on television. The drama, starring Julianna Margulies, looks at topical legal cases and the machinations of political campaigns as it delves into human motivations like greed, ambition and temptation. Even more interesting is Margulies’ character, Alicia Florrick, the insecure junior associate, humiliated by her husband’s betrayal and corruption scandal, who reinvents herself as a confident, competent partner in a law firm.

WS: The Good Wife is one of the few shows whose critical acclaim increases season after season. How would you explain such success?
MARGULIES: It’s the writing. One of the luxuries of television, especially network television, is that we really get to keep up with what’s happening in today’s world as it’s happening. That’s very beneficial in many ways. It keeps the show fresh and exciting; it’s not old news. That’s part of it, and a tremendous part of it is that as the lead of the show, I see what the writers have to put up with in terms of scheduling conflicts and actors coming and going and contracts being expired. Instead of looking at it as a burden, they look at it as an opportunity to advance all the other characters. So they bring on these new interesting characters that bring fresh life to the characters that have been there since day one. There is something really refreshing about that. It never feels the same and I say this because most actors shy away from television and only want to do film or theater because playing the same role can get stale. Whereas for me personally, I’m always excited to play this character because she is constantly peeling off these layers and discovering every week who she is and who she can become, but is also dealing with new characters that come in. The Kings [showrunners Robert and Michelle King] have really managed a beautiful balance of staying on top of all topics that are political and also case topics. We did Bitcoin and two years later all that was in The New York Times was about Bitcoin! We had a whole case with Oliver Platt about whether someone has the right to refuse to serve a gay couple in a store and the next week it was all over the papers. There is an incredible poignancy in that.

This interview continues here.